Microsoft App Turns Your Phone Into a 3D Scanner

Most people use their smartphone for making phone calls, checking emails, sending texts, and playing Candy Crush. But a Microsoft research team wants to add 3D scanning to that list.

A new Microsoft Research project, dubbed MobileFusion, runs on off-the-shelf mobile phones, using the RGB camera found on most phones to scan objects of varying shape, size, and appearance.

Without any added hardware or software, or even an Internet connection, MobileFusion provides real-time feedback during the capture process.

"Everything happens on the phone itself," Pushmeet Kohli, a principal research scientist with Microsoft Research, said in a statement.

Promising high-quality scans, the tool could be used for 3D printing and augmented reality video games, as well as everyday photo sharing.

Shahram Izadi, one of Redmond's principal researchers, hopes people might use the program to scan, say, the Eiffel Tower while on vacation, then share it immediately with friends and family. Or, he suggested, someone could take a 3D scan of a product to sell online.

"This is really about the accessibility and ubiquity of 3D scanning," Izadi said. "The great starting point was to take a sensor that everyone has in their pocket, which is the camera you have on your mobile phone."

Since most mobile devices are powerful enough to build a 3D-scanning system using only existing features, researchers dove in. They developed an algorithm to allow the camera to take multiple images that form a 3D picture—similar to how the human eye works, Izadi said.

MobileFusion is still mostly under wraps; it will make its debut during October's International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality in Japan.

"What this system effectively allows us to do is to take something similar to a picture, but it's a full 3D object," Peter Ondruska, former Microsoft Research intern, said about the project.

The program, which will eventually launch to the public, is expected to work with iOS, Android, and Windows-based devices.